[SOLVED] Exploding text & splines

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CVH
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Joined: Wed Sep 27, 2017 4:17 pm

[SOLVED] Exploding text & splines

Post by CVH » Mon Jul 22, 2019 8:28 am

Win7pro Qcad3.23pro

Can it be that we lost the functionality to explode TTF to splines.
As I remember TTF text exploded to spline outlines.
I may have contributed to the quick step to polylines what I am using a lot.
But it was certainly never my intention to fully restrict to polys, arcs & lines.

In App Prefs chosing not to explode TTF to polys we now get loose lines and arcs and sometimes but a very few splines.

And further on that:
Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueType .. Technical notes:
'TTF are made of straight line segments and quadratic Bézier curves'
Where does the arcs come from and why are we getting cubic Bézier curves.

regards
Last edited by CVH on Tue Jan 12, 2021 3:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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andrew
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Re: Exploding text & splines

Post by andrew » Mon Jul 22, 2019 11:24 am

CVH wrote:
Mon Jul 22, 2019 8:28 am
Can it be that we lost the functionality to explode TTF to splines.
Nothing has changed with the exploding of entities in the last releases.
CVH wrote:
Mon Jul 22, 2019 8:28 am
As I remember TTF text exploded to spline outlines.
This depends a lot on the font and how it was constructed / what type of geometry it contains.
CVH wrote:
Mon Jul 22, 2019 8:28 am
In App Prefs chosing not to explode TTF to polys we now get loose lines and arcs and sometimes but a very few splines.
This simply means that the font you are using contains a lot of splines that happen to be arc shaped and lines or splines that happen to be straight.
CVH wrote:
Mon Jul 22, 2019 8:28 am
Where does the arcs come from and why are we getting cubic Bézier curves.
QCAD uses Qt to render texts into paths. Qt does not support quadratic splines for this step. The presentation should be the same though.

CVH
Premier Member
Posts: 3416
Joined: Wed Sep 27, 2017 4:17 pm

Re: Exploding text & splines

Post by CVH » Mon Jul 22, 2019 8:38 pm

I didn't mean in any of the latest releases, sorry if I put you on the wrong leg there.
We had a very constructive debate done by mail about it at the end of 2016 and in the year 2017.
Afterwards I joined the forum and the bugtracker on your request.
The pre-snapshot files I received directly from you date from jan 2017 and later jun 2017.

The reported issue then was the same as now:
'Recently the fully closed paths of TEXT explodes to multiple Splines, Lines and Arcs.
This was different in earlier versions, a closed path used to explode to one single closed Spline.'
And corrected: to one single geometrically closed Spline.

There was even a tickle down on the forum.
viewtopic.php?f=32&t=4623

Thereafter came the release of version 3.16.5. And in your own words:
'...with some improvements regarding CXF fonts and the way texts are exploded'.
Well that did the trick for me, and I am exploding text ever since with only minor issues.

I was sourcing different kinds of Spline's to document them to CSV to get deeper in:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5775
&
viewtopic.php?f=47&t=4859
&
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5566

It would be nice to be able to explode TTF in its native code.
As any quadratic spline can be represented by a cubic, it doesn't matter what Qt parses through.
The on the fly simplification could be set optionally.
Sometimes we work wih raw data that we want to keep as raw as functionallity let us.
Sometimes we don't and we fully use the Qcad tools.

Regards

CVH
Premier Member
Posts: 3416
Joined: Wed Sep 27, 2017 4:17 pm

Re: Exploding text & splines

Post by CVH » Tue Jan 12, 2021 3:47 pm


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